An introduction to The Erotic Cloth

Millar, L and Kettle, Alice (2018) An introduction to The Erotic Cloth. In: The Erotic Cloth: Seduction and Fetishism in Textiles. Bloomsbury Academic, London. ISBN 9781474286800

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Abstract

The publication The Erotic Cloth - Seduction and Fetishism in Textiles constitutes new and previously unpublished research on the aesthetics of cloth as a sensual medium and its relationship to the body. The book emerged from the eponymous colloquiam, has subsequently been the subject of 3 academic seminars, presented as a paper at the ‘Joy of the Erotic’ conference Palermo Sept 2018, Festival of Erotic Art, London 2019, a performance at the NAO Arts Festival Milan 2018 and informing the major exhibition The Sensuous Cloth hosted and funded by Compton Verney Art Gallery 2021. The book will be translated into Chinese in 2020. The volume was co-edited by Kettle and Prof Lesley Millar, Director of the International Textile Research Centre, UCA Farnham. It includes a co-authored introductory chapter, individual chapters and co-authored introductory sections by Kettle and Millar. The research surveys contemporary thinking contributing to material culture and haptic studies on the experience of the erotic through perspectives on the methods, politics and philosophies of encounters with cloth through a trans-disciplinary approach to the subject. Organised into four cognate sections, on representation, design, otherness and performance, the research addresses the elisions and frictions of the erotic in cloth and posits that cloth as a sensual material language permeates other fields of practice including art, design, cinema, politics and dance. It posits a variety of interpretations in which erotic is a multifaceted state, historically, culturally connected and materialised through our physical relationship with cloth. The contributions are written in a variety of tones, including those of 15 practitioners and academics. This book is the first critical examination of the erotically charged relationship between the surface of the skin and the touch of cloth, exploring the ways in which textiles can seduce, conceal and reveal through their interactions with the body.